Fellow Musicians Still Crazy After All These Years About Paul Simon’s Music

Last night at New York’s Carnegie Hall a multitude of musicians explored the lengthy, adventurous career of Paul Simon.

A fundraiser for New York City music-education programs, the concert featured Judy Collins, John Doe, Joe Henry – who performed with his son Levon and Kenneth Pattengale of the Milk Carton Kids – Angélique Kidjo, Bob Mould, Allen Toussaint and others, backed by Antibalas, an inspired choice for a house band.

After a slow start, perhaps attributable to a string of songs from Simon’s early, more somber days, the concert found its footing in a stretch kicked off by Bob Forrest of Thelonious Monster and Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers with, of all things, a Ramones-like reading of “Motorcycle,” a song Simon wrote in 1962 for Tico and the Triumphs. (“We be the troubled waters under the bridge,” Haynes joked.) Isobel Campbell and Vetiver’s Andy Cabic’s cheery reading of “Born at the Right Time,” and “Think Too Much” by TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and Antibalas’s Amayo tapped into Simon’s compositional joy, and Brent Dennen’s tender “Something So Right” and Dan Wilson’s wonderful “Only Living Boy in New York” exposed his thoughtful side.

Late in the program, Bettye LaVette prowled the stage as she toyed with the wry lyrics of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” With the Antibalas horns at her back, Kidjo and “You Can Call Me Al” proved an ideal marriage of singer and song.

One quibble: Only Ben Sollee, with his reading of “Wartime Prayer,” explored Simon’s 21st century compositions, which include some of the best writing of his career, now in its sixth decade.

In previous years, similar youth-oriented fundraisers produced by Michael Dorf at Carnegie Hall featured the music of Bob Dylan, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Joni Mitchell, Prince, the R.E.M. Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, the Who and Neil Young. During last night’s program, Megan Doyle and Snow Guilfoyle, 13 year olds who attend the Church Street School of Music, a recipient of funds from Dorf’s events, performed “Scarborough Fair.”

If anything, the concert illustrated the richness of the Simon catalog and its cross-generational appeal. Before his performance of “Still Crazy After All These Years,” Richard Marx revealed that his father, the composer Dick Marx, encouraged him as a child to study that song. And prior to his reading of “Duncan,” Josh Ritter said his dad called Simon “the greatest artist of my generation.”

Jim Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him atjfusilli@wsj.comand follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.